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Preached to the Cambridgeport Parish, 
May 28, 1S71, 

Oil the First Sunday after the Ratification 

of the Treaty with England, by the 

Senate of the United States. 



By GEORGE W. BRIGGS. 



PUBLISHED BY REQUEST 

1S71. 






A 



Preached to the Cambridgeport Parish, 
May 28, 1S71, 

On the First Sunday after the Ratification 

of the Treaty with England, by the 

Senate of the United States. 



By GEORGE W. BRIGGS. 



PUBLISHED BY RE QJJ EST. 
1S71. 



E&>73 
■33 85 



The following Discourse, — the expression of an hour of joy, rather 
than an elaborate Sermon, — is commended to the forbearing judg- 
ment of those who desired it to be printed. 



SERMON. 



Isaiah ii. 4. — Neither shall they learn war' ant more. 

A grand event has occurred during the last 
week, whose importance at the present moment 
it is difficult to over-estimate, whose promise for 
the best interests of civilization itself in the 
future it is impossible to grasp. The Senate of 
the United States, which disgraced itself by angry 
discussions concerning its prerogatives, redeemed 
its character by the adoption of the Treaty be- 
tween England and America. We can almost 
forgive the unworthy debates, the waste of days, 
in the attempt to vindicate fancied privileges, 
after this act of statesmanship. Let us forget 
that it took senators a longer time to accuse one 
another for revealing what the nation had a right 
to know at the beginning, than to debate the 
treaty itself ; and let us only remember that their 
fitting duty has been so nobly done. When will 
men and legislators learn that their dignity is never 



4 

secured by attempts to defend or vindicate it? Let 
them link their names with truth, justice, liberty, 
civilization, the cause of humanity and right, and 
they place themselves upon enduring principles, 
the pillars of the universe, and stand upon ped- 
estals of honor. 

I have nothing to do with the minor details of 
this great settlement of international disputes to- 
day. Of necessity it is in a certain sense a 
compromise. Something of the most extreme 
demands was yielded on either side. In some 
respects, claims in themselves reasonable and just, 
have been partially abated. Ingenious men dis- 
cover various little points of criticism. But I 
forget all these fancied or real objections, and see 
one grand whole, one grand event in the inter- 
ests of peace. Questions of peculiar importance 
and difficulty, involving interests, grievances, na- 
tional honor, questions a hundred-fold greater than 
those which have plunged nations into bloodiest 
wars, have been calmly and honorably adjusted. 
Last summer, France and Prussia rushed to arms 
upon a mere pretext, which concerned neither the 
dignity nor rights of either empire. 'Now, con- 
troversies that involved great principles of inter- 
national law, concerning acts of outrage that 



wounded the nation to its very heart, are settled 
without a drop of human blood, without even a 
threat of war. More than that. A broader basis 
of mutual understanding and harmony is estab- 
lished, which at once atones for the past and 
secures the future. Let there be no petty criti- 
cisms upon a measure in itself so grand. The 
clamor of little unsatisfied interests should be 
silenced in the sublime accord of this great vic- 
tory of peace. 

How silently the most beneficent and grandest 
things are accomplished ! For almost a year the 
world has resounded with the clash of arms. 
The tumult of the battle has filled Christendom 
with its din, and morning and evening, millions 
have intently listened to the tidings from the field 
of strife. The eyes of Europe and America, I 
had almost said of the race itself, have been fas- 
tened upon one spot, as if there alone were events 
worthy of attention. The great things were not 
there. God does not disclose his greatest maj- 
esty in the storm, the earthquake, that blanch 
men's cheeks with fear. The silent forces of 
Nature, that cover the earth anew with living 
green, robing hill and vale and prairie with beauty, 
that hold the stars in their orbits, that bring the 



6 

evening and the morning, the seed-time and the 
harvest, with their ever-varying splendors, — these 
are more beneficent and grand. This awful out- 
break of war has accomplished little. Sedan and 
its accompanying battles discrowned one empe- 
ror and made another ; but they established no 
new principle of international law, gave no new 
security to civilization and peace. A few Com- 
missioners, quietly discussing mutual differences at 
"Washington, have done an immeasurably mightier 
work than generals, marshals, emperors, hurling 
millions of men at one another in the fury of 
the battle. The noiseless movement of the pen 
has performed a greater deed than the roar of 
artillery. This European war has compacted dis- 
united Germany indeed into an empire, — a result 
which will be a blessing if she wisely develops 
the resources of her power and the mind of her 
people ; or which may be a curse if she too be- 
comes besotted with dreams of success and con- 
quest. But whatever Germany may be in the 
future, she has sown in the heart of France the 
seeds of undying hate, that may bear the deadly 
fruit of other wars. The peaceful Commission 
has given a new security against war itself, sown 
the seeds of good-will between continents and 



nations, and recognized a principle of interna- 
tional justice which civilized men will rejoice to 
honor. "What is it that Yon Moltke, the Prus- 
sian commander, has planned and executed a cam- 
paign that seems unparalleled in the annals of 
war, and written his name on the scroll of martial 
renown with that of the first Napoleon ? The 
negotiator who maintains national honor and 
establishes peace, writes his name higher still, 
and on a far nobler scroll. The warrior has a 
kind of greatness. The figure of the great Na- 
poleon is fitly sculptured upon the front of the 
Arch of Triumph in Paris, surrounded with dread 
and fitting elnblems, to perpetuate his fame as a 
splendid type of that form of genius. But 
"blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be 
called," they are, " the children of God." Let 
the bugle sound its triumphant notes for the vic- 
tors in battle. But when the peacemakers do 
their work the angels sing the heavenly song, 
" On earth peace, good-will among men." 

"What a contrast between the appalling scenes in 
Europe, and the peaceful negotiations here during 
the last few weeks. The Germans had completed 
their conquest. But their withdrawal from the 
strife was only to give place to a deadlier, more 



8 

inhuman contest. There, battle has raged around 
the city, and along the streets of Paris, blazing 
fiercely as the fires of hell. Here, trusted states- 
men sought to weigh great questions in the bal- 
ance of justice, and to adjudicate upon them in 
the spirit of civilization and forbearance. There, 
palaces and public temples, whose beauty was itself 
an education, were ruthlessly burned to ashes. 
Here, with " no sound of axe or hammer," men 
were building a fairer edifice of international com- 
ity and law, in which nations should clasp hands in 
lasting fellowship. There, the descendants of the 
Latin race, as their fallen emperor termed them, 
flew at each other's throats with the ferocity of 
fiends. One who has ever been in Paris, in the 
streets now desolate with fire and red with blood, 
must mourn as he thinks of the smouldering ruins, 
the heaps of the slain, in places where he gazed 
upon such magnificence and beauty. Here, the 
descendants of the Anglo-Saxon race recognized 
the sublime appeal to reason and right, and met 
one another in the true dignity, and mutual respect, 
of civilized manhood. In the one place it would 
seem as if the demons gained a transient, but for a 
time, an absolute supremacy. In the other, though 
his name was not spoken, nor, perhaps, his influ- 



9 

ence even recognized, — in the public sentiment 
which his agency has created, educating, civilizing 
the advanced nations of Christendom, until they 
became prepared to recognize the majesty of truth 
and reason, — the Prince of Peace overruled the 
deliberations of men, and drew them into harmony. 
Whence came this contrast ? All days, rightly 
viewed, are judgment-days. The results of past 
action, — its fidelity, or sinfulness, — become in- 
wrought into our life, to make us strong, or weak, 
to shape our present condition, and determine our 
destiny. The actual character, sooner or later, 
reveals its nature, and does its work. France has 
met another of her judgment-days. The world 
has admired, and gloried in her splendor. Travel- 
lers have journeyed over ocean and continent to 
study her works of art, to feast their eyes upon the 
magnificence of her now desecrated capital. In- 
telligent men in every land have listened to her 
physicians, mathematicians, her adepts in various 
forms of science, as holding a high place among 
the world's teachers. Her novelists, and men of 
letters, have fascinated myriads of readers. With 
her sunny lands, her apparently assured pros- 
perity, her brilliant capital, — the queen of taste, 
and the home of art, — she seemed a year ago to 



10 

stand the first among the empires. But, though 
fertile in men of letters, ignorance was the charac- 
teristic of her people ; and, demoralized by luxury 
corrupted by social indulgence, — by the love, and 
the vices of war, — " when the winds blew, and the 
floods came," the edifice of greatness, built upon 
the sand, fell into ruins. Then the mask was torn 
away, and men showed themselves to be savages 
at heart. The fairest city became most like hell. 
No merely external civilization, with its grace of 
manners, its attainments in art, its splendors of 
architecture, or even its apparent progress in let- 
ters, can stand. It is the civilization of principle 
and character alone that is based upon a rock. 

And shall we venture to name the other side of 
the contrast ? France has been " weighed in the 
balance, and found wanting.'- Shall we presume 
to say that England and America, in the test 
which these multiplied causes of national irritation 
have brought to their character, yet listening to 
reason instead of rushing to arms, have been 
weighed in the balance also, and not found want- 
ing ? The faults of England are clear enough to 
American eyes. We do not dwell upon them now, 
— the wrongs at home, abroad, on every continent 
which her flag has covered. The faults of Amer- 



11 

lea are also plain, — the growing corruption of her 
cities and her politics. Though her one appalling- 
crime of slavery has been washed out in blood, 
perhaps atoned for by priceless sacrifices of price- 
less lives, blots enough remain to change all boasts 
into confessions. What patriot is not at times dis- 
heartened by the yet unsolved problems in respect 
to universal education, to national character itself, 
which will determine our future history? God 
knows how profoundly we need all true human 
efforts, and providential guidance, to accomplish 
our true mission for right and liberty. Still the 
splendid fact remains, that controversies embracing 
many causes of dispute, relating to acts that swept 
our commerce from the seas, and perilled the very 
existence of the republic in its hour of agony, 
when it seemed tottering to its fall, that these are 
to be settled by argument instead of arms. With 
all their faults, England and America are civilized 
enough to accomplish a triumph of peace that 
transcends all the victories of war. 

It is a triumph of Christian civilization which 
we rejoice in to-day. Here is the reason why I 
regard it not only with joy, but with hope. Our 
text says, "Neither shall they learn war any 
more." Seven hundred years before the day of 



12 

Jesus, the prophet looked on, and on, into the 
future, to a time in which men should " beat their 
swords into ploughshares," rr to pruning hooks 
their spears." Eighteen hundred years after the 
Prince of Peace has come, it seems to need an 
equally prophetic eye to look on, and on, to that 
distant day of joy. Sometimes we fear that this 
day of prophecy will never come. We almost 
question whether the prophet did not mistake 
some vision of heaven, of the harmony of angels, 
for the possible life of men. Not only are men 
still learning war, but they learn it now as they 
never learned it in all preceding centuries. In 
the collection of arms of different periods in the 
Tower of London, may be seen the wondrous 
progress of invention, from the rude weapons of 
a former day, to the perfected ones of the present 
hour. Science and thought have been tasked, 
century after century, to fashion more destructive 
missiles of death. Even the arts of industry have 
not made greater progress than those of war. 
Civilization makes the rifle more deadly, gives the 
cannon a more terrific range, and sends the shell 
for miles in its awful curve, as a demon of fire, 
crashing through private dwellings, or splendid 
cathedrals, on its errand of destruction and death. 



13 

The beneficent forces of nature are turned into 
engines of warfare, as if men would bring even 
the attributes of omnipotence to the work of 
slaughter. They shall learn war no more, do we 
say ? Russia seems to be arming her millions 
and mustering for battle. Prussia has become a 
camp, and outstrips former masters in the art of 
war, in the far-reaching plans of her military 
leaders, and the earthquake shock of her armies, 
shattering an empire in a day. England, Amer- 
ica, task themselves to construct the impregnable 
fortress, to build the ship which no shot can pierce, 
to fill their arsenals with the most perfect enginery 
of war. Princes and peoples are still striving to 
learn what the prophet predicted they should for- 
get. Still, the prophet was not wrong. He did 
not merely speak of a long-distant future. His 
prophecy begins to be realized to-day. Blessed 
are our eyes to see the promise of a coming dawn. 
Somehow, by all its manifold and nameless influ- 
ences, by the power of education, by the silent 
might of Christian feeling, swaying the minds 
of citizens and statesmen, — somehow, under God's 
overruling providence, a civilization has come 
which has prepared two nations for the peaceful 
settlement of disputes. The promise and glory of 



14 

this event is, that it seems an outgrowth of the 
nation's character. For this reason, we repeat, it 
is a basis of hope. A low degree of progress 
in the individual man, or in the nation, will never 
permit the peaceful appeal to reason. The brutal- 
ized, barbaric man must fight. Lift men up to a 
true civilization, educate them to recognize the 
sovereignty of thought and justice, and they out- 
grow barbaric appeals, and bow to the simple voice 
of truth as both diviner and mightier than the 
sword. 

God be thanked that this triumph of peace 
comes to balance the discouragement amidst the 
savage outbreaks of international and civil war. 
Always God sets his bow in the cloud, and 
causes it to span the heavens after every deluge, 
to re-assure our hearts and hopes. We know 
not when nations will rise above the appeal to 
arms. Sometimes wars must come. When na- 
tional existence and freedom itself are at stake, 
as in our own day of trial, lovers of their coun- 
try and of liberty must meet the terrible neces- 
sity with the soul of heroes. Those who rush 
to such a strife, like our own citizen armies, are 
not mere soldiers. Those who fall in a cause so 
sacred are martyrs. You will help to decorate 



15 

their graves during this coming week, as a sym- 
bol of a nation's deathless gratitude. Such 
graves are shrines, and voices come from them 
to inspire us to recognize the supremacy of prin- 
ciple and right. JSTo sepulchre of king or war- 
rior, in the Old "World, though in itself a tri- 
umph of art, is half so eloquent as the rows of 
graves in one of our national cemeteries, — graves 
of those perishing from wounds or starved in 
prisons, whose names even were unknown, but 
who were among the holy sacrifices for liberty. 
Such contests have come, when loyal men, lovers 
of liberty, must be faithful unto death. Perhaps 
they may come again. Still, more and more, 
civilized men will be prepared to submit to the 
control of reason, and nations will appeal to the 
tribunal of justice instead of the arbitrament of 
arms. I do not look for the triumphs of peace 
as the result of arguments in its behalf. It is 
easy to show the folly and waste, as well as the 
terrible devastations and bloodshed of Avar. The 
argument is unanswerable. But argument is 
powerless when men live in the domain of pas- 
sion instead of reason. Brutalized, passionate 
men are as deaf to reason as the brutes them- 
selves. In the true civilization that develops 



16 

manhood, the peaceful adjustments of national 
disputes will become as natural as the battle for 
barbaric races. It is a great thing to produce 
any special reform in the world's action. The 
whole ocean must be stirred in order to raise 
the tide at a single point. But then it will pour 
into every creek and inlet, and fill every channel 
open to its floods. To secure one splendid 
moral victory in the life of states, the truer civ- 
ilization must come to uplift thought, sentiment, 
character. That civilization is coming. The 
omnipotent influences are at work to affect the 
action of governments and the character of na- 
tions. The leaven of Christian truth has been 
hid in the mass of human thought, to leaven the 
whole at last. Long centuries it has seemed to 
be buried from our sight. TV T e have raised the 
old despairing cry, " Where is the promise of its 
connno- V " The coral insect, in its countless 
generations, works on perhaps for centuries at 
the bottom of the sea. But by-and-by it fash- 
ions rocks that lift themselves above the waves, 
on which fair islands are formed, rich with veg- 
etation green as that of Paradise. Xow and 
then the coming Christian civilization reveals its 
power, hurling slavery from its ancient founda- 



17 

tions, settling controversies, securing peace be- 
tween disagreeing nations. It shall accomplish 
the thing whereunto it is sent. Look through 
the prophet's eyes to the coming of that better 
day, and be glad. 

What a magnificent service to a true civiliza- 
tion England and America can render! Linked 
together by a common parentage and a common 
tongue, — among the foremost in resources, cul- 
ture, power, — spanning the globe with their set- 
tlements, — holding up the principles of peace in 
their intercourse with one another, — they may 
gradually shame or inspire Christendom to ap- 
peal to reason rather than to arms. There are 
men who seem inclined to stir up strife between 
these kindred nations. Politicians play upon the 
people's resentments to pave the way to personal 
aggrandizement. But while they thus place 
themselves with the enemies of true civilization, 
they cannot hinder its triumph. Twice already 
irritating controversies between England and 
America have had a peaceful settlement. This 
present treaty will be ratified on the other side 
of the ocean as cordially as here. These two 
kindred nations will not. learn war with one 
another any more. Joined together by a cable 

3 



18 

beneath the sea, they shall henceforth be joined 
in the closer bonds of amity. What is truest 
and best in either nation will be mutually trans- 
mitted to one another, till each shall receive the 
highest culture and progress of both, and gain a 
double inheritance of greatness. Hail to the 
event that makes such a consummation possible, 
with its promise to ourselves and to the world. 
Celebrate it at Christian altars, and gladly give 
one Sabbath to thanksgiving for such a victory 
of the Prince of Peace. 



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